Culture may be encoded in DNA by kpo

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

For instance, children of indo Europeans love indo european fairy tales. They are their favorite stories as children, and as adults, given basically zero media or cultural encouragement in that direction. Equally I find people of other backgrounds are drawn to other cultures. I know many people who are so liberal that they react against their own europeans backgrounds in favor of others, and still show this draw to indo European backgrounds, listen to classical music, read fairy tales and can't stand rap, hip hop or R&B, and I have to figure they've really tried.

Now none of this is an indicator of BEHAVIOR. it's an indication of tastes, like those of the bird. Those tastes in the birds also affect their mating behavior and social structure, and so if they have a genetic basis would be passed on.

Emphasis mine, and I sincerely dispute this. The media and cultural encouragement toward European cultural heritage (of which fairy tales are a large element) is everywhere, and the identification of people with different backgrounds for cultural heritage connected to theit background is probably due to the cultural encouragement within their own family/community that European-descendents lack.

Why would you assume that European cultural heritage is not omnipresent in America?

I find nothing to suggest that it might be genetic.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 4:34 AM

Quote:
The male birds modified their song towards a common song, they did so to attract the females, I think thats very likely. That would point to a genetic tendency.

After being introduced to "model" male vocal coaches.

The preference might exist in the females, but more based on the geography and the familiar than the genetics. And males seem to learn the songs, as opposed to relying on genetics. The genetics conclusion just does not necessarily follow.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 10:42 AM

Byte, I missed that.quote?

Rouka,

Yes of course, this si why our media is so focused on Odin Zeus and the Vikings and never pays any attention to mid eastern cultural figures such as Jesus Christ, Mohammed, david or Moses, and completely ignores Israel and Iraq and focuses on Finnish folk music instead. Oh wait, no, it doesn't. Despite the fact that there are as many Finns as Israelis and Finland has arguably more impact on our society technologically, we never hear anything about the people their language and culture. curiously, we here a fair amount about Israel. It's sort of like, despite the fact that this ipad was made by a Taiwanese company, it's name appears nowhere. The nation that jst sent us the AWhale has a population the size of Iraq, a tremendous role in the US economy, far greater than Iraq, which has dominated the news for thirty years. The recent invasion of taiwan by china prompted no reaction from the us, nor the media. Curious that.

No, I see none of this European cultural influence in the media. In fact, I think it's actively discouraged.

Citizen.

You are correct.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 11:04 AM

I reread both articles, and I couldn't find the reference again. I think it was a remnant artifact of the "strapping young birds become model singers" statement.

In any case, clearly the birds learn the songs. Successive generations of males "tweak" the songs after learning them, there is always an individual touch to each bird's song.

The article claims that the birdsongs after four generations are "more like the wild bird song." But how do they measure this?

Even if they show that successive generations have become comparatively "more like wild bird song," how do we know that this is genetic? How do we know that the wild bird song variant doesn't just represent the most easy and convenient arrangement? Like shorthand words in English slowly becoming accepted spelling (through vs. thru)?

If it was genetic, why did the first generation deviate in the first place? Wouldn't the bird song have remained the same, despite being put in soundproof boxes and despite being isolated from hearing the "correct" version?

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Friday, July 2, 2010 1:14 PM

DT,

When I said European cultural heritage, I meant mostly fiction as carried on by the European literary tradition, as well as family traditions, habits, religious traditions, music etc. I should have been clearer there, that cultural heritage didn't mean news media.

To call Jesus a middle Eastern cultural figure makes about zero sense. Christianity is one of the most dominant pieces of cultural heritage that most European countries share. Heck, the popular image of Jesus is that of a light-skinned European man! Christianity is also very dominant in the U.S., brought by the same European settlers who brought the rest of their culture, from food recipes to holiday traditions to dress style to music.

You used fairy tales as an example and dispute any cultural or media encouragement for European Americans to prefer them. Considering that, for example, Grimm's fairy tales were collected from oral tradition and then published in the 19th century, they would carry themes that connect pagan European images with Christian symbolism going back centuries. Just to give an idea of the time frame and scope of cultural saturation I mean. The European settlers in the U.S. brought their tastes and traditions with them and preserved them for a time even on a level of nationality. That for generations their descendents would gravitate toward European-style culture and identify with it needs no genetic basis to explain. European fairy tales just fit that imparted cultural vocabulary.

That and European-Americans are probably quite simply read these Grimm's fairy tales more likely than they are read non-European fairy tales, because that's what their parents know. In addition to being culturally primed, they simply have more exposure to them, explaining their preference.

Then there's Disney, or really any other book/movie/tv show that bases itself on European fairy tales or literature. Cinderella, the travelling hero going as far back as Ulysses, the ultimate heroic sacrifice to mirror Jesus, etc. It's all over.

And that's really just the fairy tale example.

Unless you really misread my earlier post to refer to news media, I can't see how you can argue that European heritage is not all over American culture.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 2:19 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Yeah, I'm doubting the assumption that this is "culture." How much of the song has to do with the physical structure of the bird? Are their beaks and throats designed for that particular sound, since it's the only one that species makes?

Surely, to some extent - but why did it take 3 or 4 generations for the song to evolve back to normal sound? This suggests that both learning, and innate sense (of how the song should sound) is involved.

Quote:
It seems that the bird scientists are arguing along the lines that English babies left alone for four generations will genetically revert to speaking English, Chinese babies speaking Chinese, etc.

No, I don't think they're suggesting that. The birdsong is more than language it's a mating call - which is a display of beauty designed to attract a mate (think peacocks), not just to notify one... So it's an art/culture thing more than a language one.

Heads should roll

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Friday, July 2, 2010 2:40 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Even if they show that successive generations have become comparatively "more like wild bird song," how do we know that this is genetic? How do we know that the wild bird song variant doesn't just represent the most easy and convenient arrangement? Like shorthand words in English slowly becoming accepted spelling (through vs. thru)?

Interesting theory - perhaps we would then expect each bird to slowly tweak the song, rather than it needing a new generation to come along and tweak it.

Quote:
If it was genetic, why did the first generation deviate in the first place? Wouldn't the bird song have remained the same, despite being put in soundproof boxes and despite being isolated from hearing the "correct" version?

It's both learnt and genetic, is the impression we get from this study.

Have you read the actual study, or just articles on it? I say that because skepticism is fine, but don't expect the article to have answers for all your (quite valid) questions - that's not the article's job.

Heads should roll

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Friday, July 2, 2010 2:49 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
I suspect something like this happened, and it's simpler than people are making it out to be:

1) the females mated with available males,even if they found their songs whiny, because there was no competition.

This would be a serious flaw because as you say, there would be a competition factor. But my understanding of the study was that there was no breeding involved with the subjects, they were just given new hatchlings to tutor. That was what I got from:

"But then scientists let the isolated birds give voice lessons to a new round of hatchlings. They found that the young males imitated the songs — but they tweaked them slightly, bringing the structure closer to that of songs sung in the wild. When these birds grew up and became tutors, their pupils’ song continue to conform, with tweaks."

Heads should roll

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Friday, July 2, 2010 3:36 PM

Rouka,

Jesus is completely middle eastern, whether you take his Nazarene zoroastrian-Syrian reality or the sword from the mouth revelations character, its nothing European. But why we have all of this is that were ruled by a judeochr istian elite. That you also are is not proof of anything genetic.

I was referring to, as children. I was in a large family. We knew many other families. I watched the families of children form disparate backgrounds select stories they wanted to hewr again, none of us had tv or any serious outside influence, and without strong influences from one another, we all selected the same stories.

These, as it turns out, were the stories that were passed down, with a distinctive Celtic-European flare to them. It was these stories which had become popular with children hundreds of years ago, and that those children had asked to have those stories reread, or new ones just like them. Ultimately it all comes down to alice in wonderland, as a sort of synthesis of what it is that european children want. The idea has been nagging at me for a while, because of the fairly obvious innate slant in its favor.

Disney exists to produce this product because the children want it. They are a mercenary concern. When enough people play to those desire, that becomes culture. They create the content to fill the instinctive longing, and the result is our own tailored fairy tale.

What we are sold, as a population, is a judeochristian tradition, which largely does not appeal to the children of this culture, because it is not our fairy tale.

Check out sometime how iran has rebranded Islam, and recreated it's image to fit the persian mind, and what that mind wants, which I would assume would be Scheherazade' just as the european Christians have rebranded christianity into Narnia, and Harry Potter. If what you say was true, then there would be no need to do this.

Evolution branches out to fill all available space, and then settles down into a niche. So to with culture.

Byte,

It seems pretty obvious to me. Listen to the audio files. They start out random, and evolve towards the wild song. It's natural selection. Some songs attract the females more than others. They keep trying new things until they get it right. I, personally, find the journey more interesting than the destination, and I would think others would find the same thing, but maybe only others of my genetic background ;)'

Seriously though, its pretty cut and dried. Listen to the songs, and envision the whole scenario, and mentally walk through how it happens, how it has to happen, and you'll realize, I suspect, that this is the way it is. Its the guiding hand of evolution, and of that means that on some level, the creationists are right, and were all walking towards a preplanned destiny, then sobeit, at least to some extent.

The argument works because it makes sense, and the alternative does not. There is no reason for a mating song to exist at all if there is not a matching pattern algorithm in the females brain. There would be no slow evolution of songs if they were simply taught, so we know this is not the case. Listen to the songs.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 3:40 PM

Quote:
Interesting theory - perhaps we would then expect each bird to slowly tweak the song, rather than it needing a new generation to come along and tweak it.

It says they do.

Quote:
It's both learnt and genetic, is the impression we get from this study.

Have you read the actual study, or just articles on it? I say that because skepticism is fine, but don't expect the article to have answers for all your (quite valid) questions - that's not the article's job.

I went looking for it, but apparently didn't find it. I could check Nature, that's where it says it was published, but I suspect that's going to have a subscription fee. These online journals often do.

We might just have to settle for the write ups, imperfect though they may be, unless you have a copy?

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Friday, July 2, 2010 3:41 PM

KPO

ah, I see that you are correct. I misread how the new generations came in, I thought they weree their own hatchlings.

It would not invalidate the first generation theory though, if there were one male. Females would mate with one male given sufficient time and no competition, because reproduction is more survival conducive for the species than no reproduction. This is what I was assuming, one male in the first generation, but multiple males in subsequent generations. Actually, it seems we don't have that data, but if the children are new eggs, then the generations might be quite short, and so the total population is increasing, every male is increasing the total number, and thus the competition.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 3:42 PM

Quote:
It seems pretty obvious to me. Listen to the audio files. They start out random, and evolve towards the wild song. It's natural selection. Some songs attract the females more than others. They keep trying new things until they get it right. I, personally, find the journey more interesting than the destination, and I would think others would find the same thing, but maybe only others of my genetic background ;)'

Seriously though, its pretty cut and dried. Listen to the songs, and envision the whole scenario, and mentally walk through how it happens, how it has to happen, and you'll realize, I suspect, that this is the way it is. Its the guiding hand of evolution, and of that means that on some level, the creationists are right, and were all walking towards a preplanned destiny, then sobeit, at least to some extent.

The argument works because it makes sense, and the alternative does not. There is no reason for a mating song to exist at all if there is not a matching pattern algorithm in the females brain. There would be no slow evolution of songs if they were simply taught, so we know this is not the case. Listen to the songs.

I don't see that the non-model males do contribute, and so they wouldn't seem to be contributing to increased competition.

I'm afraid I just have to disagree.

Logically, it doesn't make sense to me for someone to call a dialect genetic. What does make sense to me in this case is that circumstances nudge learning with respect to the environmental influences.

I don't think we know enough to rule everything out but genetics.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 4:24 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Hard Rocker Ozzy Osbourne Wants His DNA Mapped To Find Out Why He's Still Alive And Not Buttraped By Satan In Hell
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/68952

Because anyone who takes a drunken shit in an elevator is obviously a superior life form.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 5:26 PM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Quote:

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Interesting theory - perhaps we would then expect each bird to slowly tweak the song, rather than it needing a new generation to come along and tweak it.
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It says they do.

Sorry, I explained that badly. I'm suggesting that if the evolution of the song was simply towards what is easiest/simplest for the bird to sing, then would we need successive generations of hatchlings, for the song to evolve? Wouldn't the first generation gradually change their own song, to what felt 'easier', and eventually reach the normal song? But there is no mention of individual birds changing their own song over time (beyond the later generations and their initial 'tweaking' of what they hear).

Quote:
We might just have to settle for the write ups, imperfect though they may be, unless you have a copy?

Sorry. But the study was featured in a recent BBC documentary on the origins of human speech... so they considered it reputable at least.

Quote:
Logically, it doesn't make sense to me for someone to call a dialect genetic.

As I said before, I don't think we can equate a mating call with a 'dialect' or a language. It's more, and less (it's a communication that only ever means one thing, not a language??) than this.

Heads should roll

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Friday, July 2, 2010 5:46 PM

Byte,

I'm not sure your post addressed my post at all. I thought the songs pretty clearly disprove the hypothesis of coaching, and that the scenario does paint itself pretty well as a social competition in a drive towards a predetermined imprint, one which can be passed through generations, hence is genetic. Since we know images which create impressions of fear can be passed down genetically, why not ones of love? Or any other emotion? An if so, and people change their behavior to suit that impression, than do they not create a culture by doing so?

You have to be very careful to not impose upon the world the filter of what you want to be true over the truth which is actually in front of you. Marcus Aurelius said that, or words to that effect. Probably in Latin.

ETA:

I found this "Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life." he goes on to say rather revel in every discovery that might open a door to a new understanding or some such thing, it's pretty Taoist of him.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 8:11 PM

I'm hesitate to commit to something I don't think we have enough evidence for. For example:

Quote:
Since we know images which create impressions of fear can be passed down genetically, why not ones of love? Or any other emotion? An if so, and people change their behavior to suit that impression, than do they not create a culture by doing so?

What? We "know" this?

Do you mean to tell me that culture dictates genes? That the current perception of anorexic human "beauty" is genetically encoded now?

Stresses dictate genes. Culture is a stressor? Functionally it seems to act, as far as I can tell, only as an aesthetic.

I think the issue here is that you're on the extreme end of nature. I'm in the middle, think some things are nature (gender identity and heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual/transgender), but that anything that can be argued to be learned is nurture. And everything I read in the article to me suggests learning.

But perhaps part of the problem is I can't hear the birdsongs, perhaps they would be very convincing. I'm just dubious that there really is a progression; the individuality of the "tweaking" of the birdsongs, and the suggestion that both isolated and wild birds tweak the song... How do you define what is a normal, wild song is there's clear variance in the population? What if all the songs are within standard deviation for normalcy?

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Friday, July 2, 2010 8:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Rouka,

But why we have all of this is that were ruled by a judeochr istian elite. That you also are is not proof of anything genetic.

I'm confused. Are you arguing that culture has a genetic basis or are you not? Because this would, yes, be the influence of a dominant culture, not genes.

Quote:

Check out sometime how iran has rebranded Islam, and recreated it's image to fit the persian mind, and what that mind wants, which I would assume would be Scheherazade' just as the european Christians have rebranded christianity into Narnia, and Harry Potter. If what you say was true, then there would be no need to do this.

But that can just as easily and more likely be explained by the fact that there was a thriving culture already existing when these religions were introduced, in both places.

If I understand correctly, you claim that culture develops according to a specific genetic model that is disparate between, say Europe and the Middle East, etc.

I don't think your fairy tale anecdote does enough to support that theory. It can equally be used as an example for how tradition is passed on so subtly is doesn't seem present yet expresses itself in preferences. Unless you were raised in a culture that was predominantly NOT European-influenced, I don't think you can make the claim that it was genetic preference that drove you kids to ask for those specific fairytales.

More than that, I don't believe it can be measured, at all, whether there is merit to your theory because it would involve raising children in unethical circumstances. Unless there is a large segment of children adopted into families from notably different cultural spheres - without ever receiving knowledge of that difference or their original cultural sphere. If you had a group like that you could try and examine whether they naturally gravitate toward their unknown "genetic" culture. It would be difficult to verify, though.

I think culture as it develops has more to do with environment, but once developed templates are carried on for a long time even with superficial changes simply because children learn them like language fairly early within the family and without much conscious effort.

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Friday, July 2, 2010 9:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:
Yeah, I'm doubting the assumption that this is "culture." How much of the song has to do with the physical structure of the bird? Are their beaks and throats designed for that particular sound, since it's the only one that species makes?

Surely, to some extent - but why did it take 3 or 4 generations for the song to evolve back to normal sound? This suggests that both learning, and innate sense (of how the song should sound) is involved.

Sorry! I wasn't clear. What I meant was that I couldn't make any kind of solid assessment of the study until I knew more about bird speech, about the physical as well as the mental mechanisms (mating choices). Actually, I think it likely that both nature and nurture are involved, I'm just not sure to what extent.

Quote:
No, I don't think they're suggesting that. The birdsong is more than language it's a mating call - which is a display of beauty designed to attract a mate (think peacocks), not just to notify one... So it's an art/culture thing more than a language one.
I'm not sure I agree with this as a conclusion. But really, I don't know enough about speech in general, much less bird speech, to debate it usefully.

I will say that I've long had a pet theory about color. I think we have emotional reactions to color that are hardwired into our brains.

Pardon me, I must explain: I got this idea while in an airplane, when I was thinking how lucky we are to live on a world with this color of sky. It really is nice to look at. Then I thought - but it's just a wavelength (or combination of several - but you know what I mean.) If Earth's atmosphere happened to scatter the wavelengths making up the color I call poo brown/yellow, and if humans shat light blue, my ancestors would have learned to associate the poo brown/yellow wavelengths with peace and tranquility, and light blue wavelengths would mean "ick". I'd be sitting on the airplane taking great pleasure in a shit colored sky. I'd be disgusted by light blue.

So then, "light blue" isn't defined by it's wavelengths as much as the emotional reaction I have to it. But was this hardwired into my DNA by my ancestors? Or did I learn these associations while I was young, from real life experience as well as the use of color in my culture? Would an isolated, blinded baby have these reactions if her eyes were turned on later in life? I really don't know. I suppose the bird song study is an attempt at carrying out this kind of experiment.

Which is all to say: yes, I believe it possible that art and culture are at least partly DNA based. But I've never seen anything that could definitively prove it. I would need to read about this study more - I hope someone does find a link to the whole thing eventually. I'm not going to look it up, though. I'm on vacation.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, July 2, 2010 9:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I don't think your fairy tale anecdote does enough to support that theory. It can equally be used as an example for how tradition is passed on so subtly is doesn't seem present yet expresses itself in preferences.

I agree. Like that study about Chinese/English language ability, (Oh - thanks for the personal experience with this, Kwicko!) and my own highly unscientific observations of how young children pick up subtle characteristics from their parents: I think a lot of traits are learned before they are exhibited, which makes it seem like they are inherent.

I don't mean to say that about the bird study (I'm still not clear on how exactly it was carried out. My fault - I haven't read carefully enough.) But I do think this applies to the fairy tale situation. By the time kids are old enough to ask for a fairy tale, they have already learned a ton of cultural information from their environment. I would have a hard time separating nature and nurture in this situation.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 2:13 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
If Earth's atmosphere happened to scatter the wavelengths making up the color I call poo brown/yellow, and if humans shat light blue, my ancestors would have learned to associate the poo brown/yellow wavelengths with peace and tranquility, and light blue wavelengths would mean "ick". I'd be sitting on the airplane taking great pleasure in a shit colored sky. I'd be disgusted by light blue.

Yep, exactly right. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or ugliness); and doesn't exist outside of it. I vaguely remember a study about human attitudes to colour, specifically looking into whether female preference of the colour pink was innate.

The thing with beauty for me is there has to be an underlying 'truth' - an hourglass figure is beautiful (to the male eye, which is very sensitive to these things) because it is an indicator of fertility. There is a good reason why that particular sense of beauty would be hardwired into our DNA - and in this respect we have 'absoluteness' of beauty. What about moral beauty? Compassion, selflessness, a mother's love for her children - so is there an absoluteness (of beauty) for human morality, wired into our DNA as a sense of beauty? I don't expect to win over the moral relativists here but that's the kpo philosophy.

Heads should roll

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 4:07 AM

Byte,

Calm down.

First, there was never a standard of anorexic beauty. You can check the stats on playboy bunnies and fashion models that i referred to earlier, they are the ideal, I think you'll find they are far from anorexic. But is that genetically encoded? Of course it is. If it weren't, there would be no evolution. The view of ideal mate has to occur *before* the actual physical change can take place. Our primal desires exist, and must happen first, unless we really do live in a creationist world.

Think of it this way: picture three mice.

The first mouse has no genetically encoded information
The second mouse has an image of a cat associated with fear.
The third has an image of a cat encoded as associated with warm cuddly places to squeak.

Who gets eaten first, who last, and how does that effect evolution?

I thought this was the somewhat obvious starting point we were all coming from.

What I find fascinating is actually this notion:

Historically, why there are Europeans at all, when much of Europe was glaciated in the ice age.

Around 80,000 years ago, a tribe from west Africa migrated north from somewhere around Rwanda to the Levant, around morn day Israel.

Around 50,000 years ago, a tribe from the Levant wandered into the mountains of Asia Minor and on up to the caucuses and the alps on the other side.

Here's the intriguing possibility: an image that we associate with wondder and magic involving tiny people, giant forests and untouched snowflakes. Sound familiar?

Consider now that such a people who had such a strange image of paradise would migrate to such a region. The people who chose not to do so were later wiped out, much later, around 35,000 years ago or so,

There's definitely something strange about a people who would do this, but the idea that they are lured to it by a genetically encoded desire is an intriguing one.

I'm not on the extreme end of nature, I don't think that I'm even in the middle.

Stress dictates genes? This seems unlikely to me. Genes are largely the result of random shuffling if pre written code donated by parasites who copied it earlier foam some other species. Sure, environmental pressures weed out the weak. That doesn't mean that they are writing the code, unless you would mean that in the above example, a love of hinterlands evolved after the people moved there, which is also possible, maybe to keep them from going back.

Saying that gender identities are genetic is not a middle of the road position. It's a pretty strong nature position. A lot of gender identities are chemical, but that does not automatically make them genetic, most of your chemical profile is actually dietary.

On the bird songs:

Do you mean you are deaf or have a hear problem, or that you couldn't find fhe audio files?

If you cant hear, i can tell you what anyone who can hear can verify: there are I think three natural bird song audios on the page to give you a frame of reference, and then a series of bird songs being tweaked as they slowly evolve from simple songs thru interesting permutations To arrive at the final result of the wild bird song. These guys really solidly prove their case, I felt.

Quote:
anything that can be argued to be learned is nurture.

This is what your missing here I think: this is exactly the position that the article is disproving,

If it is learned, it is cultural. But what if what we learn is driven by a preselector?

That would be the key argument here. It's a fascinating one to me because vie seen evidence that something like this might be going on for some time. I suspect KPO and Citizen also have. The alternative is not interesting, it is essentially to say "nothing to see he, move it along." what is also not interesting is the wulfish idea that ergo black people are automatically genetic criminals, or that anything which is very obviously social can now be said to be genetic by extension. I particularly dislike this sort of argument because its precise that misappropriation of science which leads politically minded people to silence science.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 4:16 AM

KPO

A blob is perfectly fertile and there are parts of Africa and the pacific that find that form attractive. Hourglass also indicate agility. If you want to see the perfect female form, watch rhythmic gymnastics. At least, perfect in the eyes of a european male. I suspect other european males will agree. Ive noticed that some men have more of a breast thing, but that's probably also a genetic profile.if you like russian girls you're probably part Russian, or Slavic, and so some part of you is Asian, leading to a different form, which is a genetic tendedncy to have that form, which may have resulted from a genetic tendency to select for that form.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 4:25 AM

Quote:
By the time kids are old enough to ask for a fairy tale, they have already learned a ton of cultural information from their environment.

Mal, I'd have to disagree. I think they have nothing relevant which is going to guide there. the selection of stories is pretty much from the get go. Okay, for myself, sure, you have a point. I learned to talk in Holland, so I learned Dutch. The I came here and learned English. Classical europe has a different effect on me as a result. But still, children even when they are very small like some things and not others long before they develop any taste at all. To wit, I would listen, as a kid, to John denver or rolph Harris, stuff which I might objectively say required no thought to select. Go to a fair, listen to a band playing songs to kids. They're playing certain types of tunes that kids like to hear. The band has changed it's repertoire in favor of dumb little tunes that tykes like. The kids don't know why they like them, but it does seem preconditioned.

If you mean to say that all preconditioning is some intangible early environmental factor than I would disagree, but I don't think we could prove it one way or the other. I guess an in depth study of adopted children and their preference relative to their non adopted peers would give you a split in the nature nurture here, but I think you would find that it was a split, and not a pure nurture result.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 5:05 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Just $0.02.

Encoded= hardwired. I think the fact that we can even TALK about "culture" is encoded.

I suspect we're encoded for quite a bit, but very little along the lines of what we've been discussing.

Being social- encoded. Hardwired due to long dependency. All babies, except autistic ones, respond to human face and voice.
Notion of fairness- encoded.
Notion of other- encoded.
Cooperation- encoded. (by oxytocin)
Competition- probably encoded (altho no hormone/brain structure found)
Empathy- encoded. Hardwired in the frontal lobe.
Learning/ teaching- encoded.
Capability of learning/teaching abstract thought- encoded.
Language ability- encoded
Tendency to cluster together in danger- encoded.
Serial monogamy- encoded.

If you want to find out what we're encoded for, look for things that are constant across cultures. There are probably a host of other things that are hardwired that we haven't figured out yet, but not along the lines of "beauty", which are often culturally (and therefore arbitrarily) determined.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 5:44 AM

Quote:
Byte,

Calm down.

I wasn't upset. This is just far beyond anything I have any ability to comprehend. It doesn't make sense to me.

Clearly something happens that a mouse recognizes danger, and this is encoded. Also clearly, it's been shown that things like anxiety can be carried through multiple generations because it can cause modification in how genetics are expressed through methylation.

I just have trouble buying that these triggers are THIS specific, because of the wide variance in what can trigger these response. Straight african men are attracted to WOMEN, if there is another element of this attraction such as weight or something else, it occurs on an individual level, and is an artificial construct except for being something that draws attention. Similarly, I must view the female bird attraction to birdsong this way, because the birdsong also has variations.

And in the case of the mouse, anxiety in general promotes their continued living and increases their chances for reproduction. I doubt that they have any particular reaction to CAT! more than it is they have a constant SCARED! reaction.

I think maybe you've hit my crazy eddie wall. I don't think I can agree with this conclusion under any circumstances. So I will go now.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 7:51 AM

But there's another side to it KPO: we still have no way of knowing if color preferences are indeed genetic. In China, red is the color of marriage. Not so in the West. That's cultural, not hard-wired.

If a human baby grew up on the world with a shit-brown sky, without ever knowing about earth or talking to anyone who had, would they associate the shit-brown color with tranquility?

Do Indians babies growing up in the US, if they have no contact with Indian culture, retain a genetic pre-disposal to pentatonic music? If I had grown up in India with Indian parents and nothing but Indian culture, would my brain recognize a pentatonic scale as more sonorous than the Western heptatonic?

If I was a male living 400 years ago in Europe, would I see skinny, tanned-skin woman as sex symbols, or would I think them ill fed and coarse?

If I was a male living 20,000 years ago, would I think the Venus of Willendorf was obese, or would I worship her as the ideal sex symbol?

Actually, for those last two points and regarding fertility and gymnasts: woman with very little body fat often stop menstruating. Today's sex symbol is NOT particularly fertile, so the evolution argument for the male attraction to it is pretty silly. It's totally cultural.

Dreamtrove: "The view of ideal mate has to occur *before* the actual physical change can take place."

First: you confuse me. In this sentence you say that evolutionary change happens because the mate makes a decision - which could be quite arbitrary. But then your mice example chalks up evolution not to the mate's choice, but to pressures from the environment.

Second: I don't agree. I don't think that a mate makes a choice and voila changes are wired in. Outside forces are the real deciders. A girl mouse may think the boy mouse who doesn't fear the cat is sexier. Doesn't mean that trait will pass on.

The danger from the cat is the decider. The danger actually preselects not only male mice who fear, but female mice who like male mice who fear.

DT again: "Mal, I'd have to disagree. I think they have nothing relevant which is going to guide there. the selection of stories is pretty much from the get go."

You've seen two day olds select fairy tales? Or what age are you considering "the get go"?

Maybe during the first week or so infants are focused on more basic things, but then they become absolute fucking sponges, soaking up every nuance of their parent's behavior. For this I point to the study (that I have no reference for sorry!), that language skills are programmed in our brains before we even begin to speak. But you can see this easily: look at any baby with their parent. That baby is a little copying machine, and it lives to be cared for and approved of. It picks up on every detail of mom and dad's habits and preferences. There's a good year of this intense learning before the baby starts acting independently, and showing what it's learned. (And showing what's wired in - I do think there's some of this, just not nearly as much as you're saying.)

"But still, children even when they are very small like some things and not others long before they develop any taste at all." Just because you don't see them exhibiting "taste", doesn't mean they aren't actively developing it.

Put a bunch of newborns in boxes, each completely isolated from everyone. A year later, give them a collection of fairy tales from every culture in the world. If the Euro babies prefer Euro tales and the African babies prefer African tales, then you've got some real evidence of something.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 7:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I suspect we're encoded for quite a bit, but very little along the lines of what we've been discussing.

Excellent post Signym. I think I was working toward figuring out what you said. You saved me lots of time LOL!

ETA: Signym's post is making me see the error in my earlier post, re the mice example. The fear of the cat is NOT hard-wired, he ability to learn is. Duh! Suppose cats suddenly decided to be best friends with mice, to protect and coddle them and bring them bon-bons. The mouse that was capable of overcoming its cat-fear would have a huge survival advantage.

In this way, it is vital to a species to have diversity. So while the mice that fear cats are more likely to survive, the species will do better if it always has some individuals *without* this trait. Just in case external circumstances change.

Thanks Signym - this does make me think.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 9:02 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
First, there was never a standard of anorexic beauty. You can check the stats on playboy bunnies and fashion models that i referred to earlier, they are the ideal, I think you'll find they are far from anorexic. But is that genetically encoded? Of course it is.

Are you sure? Many cultures have a very different out look on what constitutes the perfect mate. One in particular, who's name escapes me at the moment, had a fertility goddess who was almost obese. In fact the current ideal would seem to be overall bad for species survival, since thinner Women are less able to sustain child birth. In fact until very recently being fat was considered a good thing, it proved you could afford a lot of food after all, a good provider.

Also I think theres evidence of humans in Europe much earlier than your time line.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 9:23 AM

Pretty much agreeing with everything Mal4Prez is saying.

Ideals of beauty are a shifting phenomenon, thus most likely cultural.

Plus, the standard of beauty as depicted by contemporary media of any age does not necessarily reflect the individual experience of sexual attraction. So while a certain body type may be culturally popular and statistically most admired, there will still be a large number of people primarily sexually attracted to other variants. Or be attracted to traits independent of body type. Or see conflict between their standard of beauty and what turns them on sexually.

Even the traits we can argue are most likely encoded as attractice (youth and health) can be overcome for reasons of emotional attraction or pheromones or whatnot.

I think this speaks for a strong cultural and psychological influence over very specific genetic encoding toward physical type.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 1:17 PM

Byte,

You're free to believe whatever you want. Fortunately, science is not a democracy.

Citizen,

You missed my earlier post where I said basically exactly what you just said. Actually, I said it in two posts. Anyway, I agree. But whether or not it's survival depends on your circumstances, or rather, those of your genetic group. Remember, if something represents a 1% survival or reproductive advantage, it takes over in 20 generations, if it is a 100% advantage, it takes over in 1 generation. Given the length of generations, I think its highly conceivable that this would change relatively quickly.

As for humans in Europe, sure. I was referring to Europeans as a genetic group, who are almost exclusively descended from east Africans. There are a few remote groups like the Sami who are related to earlier Europeans.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 2:26 PM

The study makes the case pretty plain for something which we can logical deduce to be true. Anyone with a brain can do it. So why do I now see so many theories that have no logical trace at all? Seriously, I think this is wandering into rampant speculation, and is coming up with pro and con arguments just on a simple X is wrong so Y is true, and other logical fallacies. Sorry, but it's just what people sre posting.

Conclusion: these posts represent highly emotional reactions based on preconceived political iddas and have nothing to do with science. Not a lot of thinking went into much of this, it's pretty much a knee jerk rejection of science in favor of superstition.

That said, mal, I had to point out just a couple things

1) color is subjective anyway. Because it was the sky, your brain evolved to see it as blue. What that means, I have no idea, but I know that it is true.

2) a human 20,000 or 40,000 years ago isn't really definitive information. Some would be genetically the same as you, some not at all. All tars happened in the interim is really a lot fo genetic mixing, so your just more of a universal hybrid and less of a specific type of human than your earlier ancestor would have been. I'm not sure this says anything about evolution, except that differentiation can fade over time.

3) Rhythmic gymnasts. They're not scrawny or steroidal, like their more athletic counterparts. They look thin because they're Russian, and so some part asian,

4) note I said indo European because were the same genetic group. Pentatonic music is African, or easy Asian, Indian music is 44 tone, if your European, your ancestors might have been Aryans, or they might not, but Aryan is a culture. I have no idd a whether the liking of 44 tone music is genetic. All humans respond positively to pentatonic music. Most rock and roll is basically pentatonic, with minor modifications.

5) I never said mating wS the only survival trait. Obviously if a mouse gets eaten, he does not have children after that point. That would interfere with his gene expression in the gene pool regardless of what girl mice think of his sexy new cat avoidance.

6) despite what people might want to believe, a two day old infant can neither see nor think for itself. The human brain has not yet been built. The reason humans have an extended nursing time is that the human brain is not completed until sometime in the second yearly. Thats who you can't remember your first year, nothing was being recorded. This sips a stark contrast to most of the animal kingdom. The brain was a very costly evolution which occurred over less than a million years. The body just could not keep up with the demands, so, we have this set up. But this point hinges on venturing into the absurd. I can prove that humans see by virtue of the fact that they respond to it without debatjng the electron shift of rhodopsin molecules.

7) you are correct that language capability is programmed in. I don't know if language bent is in a cultural sense, I would highly doubt it, but I don't know. I'm actually surprised by the bird study, I would have thought bird songs were leared. Anyway, the capacity of the brain to handle language is something which has been studied on a neurological level. Your vocabulary limit is also genetic. A typical dog has a limit of about 200 words, human ps vary from a few thousand to tens of thousands. You cannot apparently get more, but you can get less.: if the child is not exposed to language early on, the space gets taken over by neighboring, and older, brain functions.

As for the babies and fairy tales, interesting idea. I think it would have to be longer, and they would need to not be isolated, because they need to develop normal language skills in order to be interested at all. I say take european babies and give them to Africans and African babies and give them to europoeans if you wanted to find the answer.

My guess is that the result would be something like this:

The euro baby wiuld prefer the african tales, but they would be slightly more inclined towards the European tales than it's african brothers and sisters. I think the split is probably around 90/10 in favor of culture on this point.

What I find intriguing is not that everything is nature, but that anything is nature at all.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 5:25 PM

Actually, in my case it's a knee jerk reaction because I see the science as politicized, but point taken, which is why I said crazy eddie on me.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010 8:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The study makes the case pretty plain for something which we can logical deduce to be true. Anyone with a brain can do it. So why do I now see so many theories that have no logical trace at all? Seriously, I think this is wandering into rampant speculation, and is coming up with pro and con arguments just on a simple X is wrong so Y is true, and other logical fallacies. Sorry, but it's just what people sre posting.

Hunh. So... are you generally addressing everyone on the thread or someone in particular? Cause I don't want to go all open-can-of-whoop-ass on you if you weren't talking to me.

And if you were, I don't see as any further discussion with you is something to spend time on. I mean, given the uncharacteristic amount of typos and poor grammar in your post, it seems to represent a highly emotional reaction based on preconceptions that have nothing to do with science, and likely not a lot of thinking went into it. In fact, it's pretty much a knee jerk rejection of open-minded discussion in favor of assumptions, ego, and self-righteousness. I have no interest in that.

Ooops. The can leaked a bit.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 12:31 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Citizen,

You missed my earlier post where I said basically exactly what you just said. Actually, I said it in two posts. Anyway, I agree. But whether or not it's survival depends on your circumstances, or rather, those of your genetic group. Remember, if something represents a 1% survival or reproductive advantage, it takes over in 20 generations, if it is a 100% advantage, it takes over in 1 generation. Given the length of generations, I think its highly conceivable that this would change relatively quickly.

I missed it, I've not reading this thread exhaustively because I don't have much time for a nature/nurture debate, largely because I think both sides are wrong. So Yeah I probably did miss it, but i still think we're coming to somewhat different conclusions.

Anyway I'm fairly sure genetics won't change that quickly. It's not like theres a channel from the brain's cultural belief system to the bodies genetics, you're looking at a feedback through survival of the fittest that means genes that most effectively represent the cultural meme's become more prevalent. Firstly that'll take several generations just to get started, think how long it takes to produce a new breed of dog, which is a far more simple and directed change. Secondly the human animal's exposure to survival of the fittest has eroded significantly, to the point where it probably has little to no bearing on human evolutionary pressure at this point. This is generally the purpose of civilisation, to protect it's weaker members, and that has held more or less true for the last 6000+ years I think.

Not least in Europe the idea that everyone should diet and be thin didn't really come about until the mid-1800's, and didn't really take off until the early twentieth century, I find it hard to believe that a genetic predisposition could happen that quickly ever, even if it was a 100% advantage (which clearly it isn't, since fat people can still get laid now, thankfully).

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
As for humans in Europe, sure. I was referring to Europeans as a genetic group, who are almost exclusively descended from east Africans. There are a few remote groups like the Sami who are related to earlier Europeans.

You go back far enough everyone is related to Africans, I think the "Out of Africa" theory is pretty much de facto at this time.

But I think the Indo-Europeans are thought to have migrated from the Fertile Crescent, the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, outward through what is now Iran to India, and Europe. I think the actual indo-Europeans themselves didn't come into Europe until around 10,000-5000bc.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 2:57 AM

Citizen

Yeah, humans came from Africa, but the out of Africa theory is bogus. It explains one migration, and ignores all others. Humans aren't a single origin 200.000 years ago, they're more like a single origin in africa 3,000,000 years ago. A minor technicality, but in the interest of science p, worth noting. Europeans, however, are a result of that last migration.

Mal

No, I would have singled out you if I meant you, I see you have a can of whoop ass ready, maybe you should lower it from your shoulder.

I was actually including me in the people who had gone astray. I think we all wander off and started spounpting things that were pure speculation which could not be logically traced to science, and really were seeded by our own personal beliefs. I thought it was time for that particular train to stop.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 4:51 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Ideals of beauty are a shifting phenomenon, thus most likely cultural.

This seems like a really big leap to me (although I do hear it a lot): we identify a few different ideas of beuty apparently prominent in other cultures - and so we conclude that beauty is probably 100% cultural?

Okay so if I devise an experiment where I take pictures of 10 very different adult women (different health, age, fertility; different facial symmetry, different facial expression [why not?] - though nobody disfigured) and get a sample of 100 men from each of the most different cultures of the world that we can find, to rate their attractiveness, do we think there will not be strong correlation? Imagine a line for the male opinion of each culture on a line graph (all the women rated from 0-10 say) - I think the lines would undoubtedly follow each other.

We seem to take for granted the so many ideas of beauty we have in common. How about something like beauty is 95% innate, and 5% cultural.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 5:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:

This seems like a really big leap to me (although I do hear it a lot): we identify a few different ideas of beuty apparently prominent in other cultures - and so we conclude that beauty is probably 100% cultural?

Not 100%, no. But more nurture than nature, I think. And I did identify two things I believe are encoded (youth and health) and pointed out that even those are no be all end all border to sexual attraction, so... yeah, I feel it's largely cultural and psychological, because humans have a fairly wide range even within one culture.

Quote:

Okay so if I devise an experiment where I take pictures of 10 very different adult women (different health, age, fertility; different facial symmetry, different facial expression [why not?] - though nobody disfigured) and get a sample of 100 men from each of the most different cultures of the world that we can find, to rate their attractiveness, do we think there will not be strong correlation? Imagine a line for the male opinion of each culture on a line graph (all the women rated from 0-10 say) - I think the lines would undoubtedly follow each other.

And I think the common denominator would be youth and health, not necessarily a very particular shape, as was suggested here.

Quote:

We seem to take for granted the so many ideas of beauty we have in common. How about something like beauty is 95% innate, and 5% cultural.

30/70 in favor of nurture is about as high as I would go, and that includes stuff as basic as "human" and the target gender. If it was encoded, there would be extremely little variability in human sexual attraction, which is simply not the case. Each person would have ONE particular type, also not the case. And all the many forms of psychologically influenced variances in sexual attraction would also probably not exist.

Human sexuality, though, is extremely succeptible to psychological and cultural influences, both working in accordance and against each other, the same way they work in accordance and against any genetic encoding there may exist. Just look at the plethora of fetishes. 95% encoded sexual preference would probably limit that.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 5:40 AM

If its 1% nature than nature would win as the guiding force as culture or nurture is far more apt to change than nature.

But an argument for nature re beauty would go something like this:

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 5:46 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Do Indians babies growing up in the US, if they have no contact with Indian culture, retain a genetic pre-disposal to pentatonic music? If I had grown up in India with Indian parents and nothing but Indian culture, would my brain recognize a pentatonic scale as more sonorous than the Western heptatonic?

Understand me Mal4Prez, I believe human beings everywhere are pretty much the same, and that genetic differences are hardly ever much more than 'skin deep'. Differences between groups are cultural (and within groups, 'sub-cultural'?). This thread is interested in what human beings and cultures have in common, which is a lot, through history and around the world; and whether we can read something into the human condition from them. Like gender roles: are they learned, or is human society programmed to be like that? Or both (a more sensible inference)?

Quote:
If a human baby grew up on the world with a shit-brown sky, without ever knowing about earth or talking to anyone who had, would they associate the shit-brown color with tranquility?

Well we've evolved over thousands of years under blue sky... I think for the baby's sake we shouldn't perform that experiment - that kid could grow up with issues. And in general I think we ignore/dismiss innateness at our peril.

Here's the 'pink' study I was talking about: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12512-women-may-be-hardwired-to-
prefer-pink.html

Quote:
Actually, for those last two points and regarding fertility and gymnasts: woman with very little body fat often stop menstruating. Today's sex symbol is NOT particularly fertile, so the evolution argument for the male attraction to it is pretty silly. It's totally cultural.

There is a variation on the idea of beauty within cultures - and within any group of male friends or whatever. I think it's more accurate to say differing ideas of beauty are psychological (or maybe down to different genes - black men liking big bums? At the risk of sounding like Kaneman...).

Of course, culture can inform psychology - but so can other things: formative realtionships, life experience. These may still be 'nurture', but not quite 'culture', I think...

Heads should roll

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:01 AM

Is this about winning, DT?

What I was arguing against was your theory that sexual attraction is genetically limited to a Very Very Specific Type of human form. I simply see no evidence of that when I look around at how human sexuality expresses itself.

I never argued that genes play no role, but to usethe term "winning" seems inappropriate. Obviously, everything we do has a genetic basis, but exactly how that everything is expressed... that's the real question, and in many instances it is developed by nurture, quite flexibly.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:07 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

With pointy heads, distended earlobes, radical piercing, and elongated necks all being considered beautiful by various cultures and groups, I can't advocate for any universal or intrinsic standards of beauty within the human animal. We seem able to focus on anything, exaggerate it excessively, and call it beautiful.

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews, Wulfenstar. I apologize for the inconvenience.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:25 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
And I did identify two things I believe are encoded (youth and health) and pointed out that even those are no be all end all border to sexual attraction, so... yeah, I feel it's largely cultural and psychological, because humans have a fairly wide range even within one culture.

Right on.

Quote:
And I think the common denominator would be youth and health, not necessarily a very particular shape, as was suggested here.

The only common denominators? No correlation for large hip:waist ratio (a proven indicatorof fertility)? What about things like facial symmetry, an indicator of good genes (if I remember right)?

I agree with almost all your other points, and I might come down to 70/30 in favour of nature - as I think youth/health/fertility etc. are *big* factors, to the male eye. I agree about human psychology, and I think beauty is person-specific to some extent because we are all looking for compatibility, in our mate selection. But as I say, the ability to *mate* should probably be first and foremost in mate selection!

Quote:
If it was encoded, there would be extremely little variability in human sexual attraction, which is simply not the case. Each person would have ONE particular type

Attractiveness *does* have a lot of common agreement: otherwise there wouldn't be commonly agreed attractive people. But I don't think it's encoded that we each have specific physical types - so okay, not 95% encoded. Blonde hair I think is a trick that women in cold climates evolved: a way of displaying their youthfulness while their bodies were covered, I think I read. And males learned to recognise it as sign of youthfulness. So this kind of sense I think may be hard-wired, but for this to be the absolute governing factor in a male's mate selection must come down to his individual psychology, I think.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Mal

No, I would have singled out you if I meant you, I see you have a can of whoop ass ready, maybe you should lower it from your shoulder.

I was actually including me in the people who had gone astray. I think we all wander off and started spounpting things that were pure speculation which could not be logically traced to science, and really were seeded by our own personal beliefs. I thought it was time for that particular train to stop.

*setting down the can and backing away...*

I could reply specifically to the rest of that post, but it does seem that you wrote it when tired or something. It was pretty rough, not like what I've seen from you elsewhere. But bring up any specific point you want to hear back about and I'll get to it.

One topic I will carry on: I found some interesting stuff regarding babies and brains....

“Brain cells are “raw” materials — much like lumber is a raw material in building a house. Heredity may determine the basic number of “neurons” (brain nerve cells) children are born with, and their initial arrangement, but this is just a framework. A child’s environment has enormous impact on how these cells get connected or “wired” to each other. Many parents and caregivers have understood intuitively that loving, everyday interactions — cuddling infants closely or singing to toddlers — help children learn.

A brain is not a computer. The brain begins working long before it is finished. And the same processes that wire the brain before birth also drive the very rapid growth of learning that occurs immediately after birth. .”
http://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4356e/

“When we are babies, our brains are more open to the shaping hand of experience than at any time in our lives. In response to the demands of the world, the baby's brain sculpts itself.”
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/episode1/index.html

Genetics & Environment Interact
• There is mounting evidence that early experiences can dramatically alter the way genes are expressed in the developing brain.
The Basis of Learning
• The past decade has seen a massive amount of research on infant brain development & learning
• Babies know more than we once thought
A Summary of Infant Skills
• 2-day-old infants recognize their mother's voice and prefer it over other sounds.
• 3-month-olds can discriminate primary colors, & prefer red & yellow over blue & green.
• 6-month-olds recognize a mobile 2 weeks after being exposed to it for 2, 15-min. intervals.
• 7-month-olds can match angry or happy facial expressions with the corresponding vocal expression.
• 9-month-olds will imitate simple actions which they see being performed on objects, one week later.
True Memory
• Memory in the “strict sense” comes into being with the development of higher levels of the brain.
• The amygdala and frontal lobes are important in memory
• They develop relatively late in infancy, at about ten months of age.
Memory & Learning
• Sound perception develops first and fastest
• Research by Jusczyk et al. at Johns Hopkins investigated infants' long-term memory for the sound patterns of words.
• This study shows that infants have a previously unknown type of unconscious memory for detailed sound patterns
• Even if infants don't understand what they hear, “their nervous system is paying attention.”
http://www.slideshare.net/vacagodx/infant-brain-development-2891731

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:43 AM

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

With pointy heads, distended earlobes, radical piercing, and elongated necks all being considered beautiful by various cultures and groups, I can't advocate for any universal or intrinsic standards of beauty within the human animal. We seem able to focus on anything, exaggerate it excessively, and call it beautiful.

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews, Wulfenstar. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Yes but I think there's a truer, more timeless and cross-cultural human sense of beauty, based on the truth of the human condition, and mating requirements: youth, health, fertility, good genes... at the very least. We could probably even move into things like personality: are some of the character traits that we call 'feminine' indicators of good potential mothers? And so on.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:55 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"Yes but I think there's a truer, more timeless and cross-cultural human sense of beauty, based on the truth of the human condition, and mating requirements: youth, health, fertility, good genes... at the very least."

Hello,

I think it is possible for the human animal to become so warped in judgment as to render even supposed universals like youth, health, fertility, and good genes entirely moot.

I do not know if we are unique in being able to think ourselves towards poorer evolutionary choices, but I do think we are capable of it.

Call it the Peacock syndrome, if you like. We can take it to absurd extremes. Everything beautiful can be re-branded as ugly, everything ugly can be labeled beautiful, everything practical be made to seem evil, and everything impractical can become ideal. We're a strange animal, that way.

--Anthony

Due to the use of Naomi 3.3.2 Beta web filtering, the following people may need to private-message me if they wish to contact me: Auraptor, Kaneman, Piratenews, Wulfenstar. I apologize for the inconvenience.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 6:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Understand me Mal4Prez, I believe human beings everywhere are pretty much the same, and that genetic differences are hardly ever much more than 'skin deep'. Differences between groups are cultural (and within groups, 'sub-cultural'?). This thread is interested in what human beings and cultures have in common, which is a lot, through history and around the world; and whether we can read something into the human condition from them. Like gender roles: are they learned, or is human society programmed to be like that? Or both (a more sensible inference)?

So the word "culture" is dependent on how you define your groups. You could mean all humans as a group, as opposed to apes. You could mean African vs Asian, or American vs Canadian, or NYCers vs Bostonians.

Your "culture" and "sub-culture" is meaningless without a specific definition of the groups involved, which wreaks havoc in a discussion with so many posters. We need a more specific definition of the word "culture".

Quote:
And in general I think we ignore/dismiss innateness at our peril.

I don't intend to ignore innateness. I see it being overapplied here, to the extend that the innateness of a trait is assumed, then all other possible causes of the trait are ruled out. It's faulty logic.

I'll get to the pink study when I've got more time...

Quote:
I think it's more accurate to say differing ideas of beauty are psychological

Indeed. As I was interpreting the language in this thread, I would have called such "physchological" traits just part of culture. Yes, its generalizing a bit, but everything in this thread is a generalization.

I'm open to more specific definitions. It might help us communicate better.

-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 12:26 PM

Rouka,

Strangely, males and females find different things attractive. I don't suspect that genetics could have anything to do with that

Anyway, not all that specific. Blacks and whites are actually not closely related, unless you're British and call pakistanis "black" pakistanis and brits particularly are actually quote closely related, far more so than bantus are to Zulus. If you want to know how cloly or distantly related any group of humans is, trace back their anthropological history. Years of separation is a better measure of different than any form of test you can do. The average african is about 0.2% different from a European, which is 10-20% of humanity, since humanity is about 1.6% or so, in range. If you're outside of that range, you like your mates to be hairy and walk on their knuckles. Ergo, surely, there will be lots of things in common of what black men and white men might like, and sure, most of it would be cultural, but that genetic tendency of difference is likely to create the physical differences we see, which is why black men and white men do not look alike, and can be separated in ones mind. But I find this subtopic really truly inane, and have little interest in it.

Of course change isn't always good. Studies seem to show that humans have been getting dumber for some time. Hence I tend to skip wulfs posts on topics like this one, and so I missed his comment.

Wulf,

Look up the "moral center" of the brain, this was a discovery a couple years ago. Morality is a recent evolution, and probably still in the process of developing.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 12:50 PM

Mal

Yes, the tendency of the discussion of beauty is a meaningless sidedtrail anyway. Its somewhat obvious to me that beauty has to be somewhat genetically relative or races which lived in similar climates would look exactly like one another.

Consider this: jews have big noses, thats a minor trait. Its even more minor that people might think a big nose was unattractive. However, if jewish women selected against big noses, they would have disappeared some time ago. It's more rational to assume that non-Semites are more likely to select against big noses which is why they even bother to mention it, and not, say, the semitic tendency towEd curly hair. But that may be an issue to non Semites, but not to Semites.

Anyway, on the subject of brains

BRAAAIINS

Oh, sorry. Yes and no.

The baby is born with a fairly substantial number of encoded neurons, so we know its born with some knowledge. The neural pathways that are used the most develop into synaptic superhighways, regardless of whether they were among the original ones. Typically, sex drive is a superhighway, butt for everyone.

Internally, the brain is a commnity of cells that think independent, and then essentially vote on their exchanged ideas. Each noes has a ddsignated function determined by the majori of input.

As most cells are near a node that is on a superhighway, and the most prominent superhighways are connected to sensory input, much of the differentiation is determined de facto by he layout of the brain, even though the cells are not determined specifically by genetics.

This means that a blind persons eye related cells would be free to reassociate with the ear, and often do. Extreme caes of bizarre upbringing would create this sort of effect, but its unlikely that minor social differences are going to make much difference here.

Genetically, were far more varied. If you really get into it, you realize that the major genetic differences between humans are typically invisible. The human brain usually falls between 1200 and 1400 Ccs, but has an extreme range of 800cc to 1600cc. This divide is related to genetic groups which are all extinct, and not easily discernible by people alive today. The races we know are relatively recent, and what would impact their extermal appearance as black white or Asian would be unlikely to have any impact on the size of their brain, or their intelligence, as much as some people might want it to.

Instead, the impact comes from a persons direct ancestry and a random shuffling there of. I was reading a study of the diffusion and absorption, and they said that random swedes could be found with both 800cc and 1600cc brains, as well as random Congolese. Numbers below 1200 are much rarer than the rest of the spectrum, but certainly exist in all ethnic groups.

Curiously, it's not as important as it would seem either, people with larger brains, sure, are more intelligent, or perhaps more versatile in the number of tasks they can learn. It's less of a determinant of how far you can go within one field. (Einstein had a brain of 1300cc)

Another thing which should be considered is the non genetic innate. If a child loses brain mass to feta, alcohol syndrome, it can be catastrophic, but even if it's undetectable, it will not only lower his brain mass but could disrupt essential pathways.

An adult alcohol whose pathways are already biltong is perhaps even more at risk. It's entirely possible that a long term substance abuser like the former president has lost half of his brain cells during his lifetime. If he were to start out at the low end of the gene pool, the result would be similar to that of an ape or chimpanzee. Of course, not identical, he would still have much more language ability. ;)

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Sunday, July 4, 2010 5:10 PM